Special Delivery
by WellspringCD
Summary: Varric convinces Hawke that dungioneering is for suckers, and they begin a lucrative new business based on their core competency.


_After the ninth or tenth time I found some random item in a crate and was told that I now had a side quest and must deliver it, this little piece of absurdity popped into my head. Enjoy!

* * *

_

As usual, the Hanged Man was crowded, hot, and loud. That might have been why Hawke, Varric, Merrill and Isabela weren't noticed as they broke into every single room and rifled through the chests and dresser drawers.

In one small room near the back of the inn, Merrill gave a cry and held up a beautifully woven shawl. "Oh, my! Look how pretty this is! I had no idea shemlen could weave such beautiful colors. Such a pity that it doesn't belong to anyone."

"It is strange that everything in a box is junk and nobody cares if we take it," Hawke agreed, looking up from a chest. Its lock lay on the floor, expertly picked.

"Yeah, a real shame," Varric said, bustling over to touch the weave with the hand that wasn't in a sling from their last encounter with the Redwater Raiders. "Bet we could get _good_ coin from this. I know a guy in Lowtown-"

"Ooh, wait, it has a name woven into it." Merrill pointed the name out. "'Dalesdottir.' She must have lost it. We should return it!"

"There might be a reward," Isabela said.

Hawke scratched absently at his thick black beard. "We could ask Aveline if the city has any records of a Dalesdottir. Come on, let's go."

An hour or so later, a woman in a slightly frumpy purple dress arrived at the room they'd vacated. She stood in the wreckage of her empty luggage for a moment, her hand over her mouth in shock.

"Maker!" she cried. "I've been robbed! Oh, Daddy, that shawl was all I had to remember you by! Who would do something so _cruel _as to rob a poor orphaned widow?"

She was so distraught while she was working at the Blooming Rose that night, she didn't ask a single question when the strange Fereldan showed up and handed her the shawl. She just clutched it to her breast, babbled thanks, and dumped all the tips she'd gathered into his waiting palm in her gratitude.

After the group left the Blooming Rose and began making their way back to Lowtown for the night, Varric asked again, "She gave you _how_ much, exactly?"

"Fifty silver," Hawke said happily.

Varric scratched at his bandaged arm, grimacing.

"Don't pick at it," Merrill scolded. "It you touch it, you'll make the swelling worse."

"That's what she said," Isabela said at once.

Merrill gave her a puzzled look. "Yes, that's what I said."

"We got, what, two gold for killing all those slavers?" Varric muttered. "Two gold, and a pair of boots you can't even wear because you're not a mage. What's the deal with that, anyway? Why is every piece of loot we find tailored _perfectly_ to you, Hawke?"

"I have a very common body type," Hawke replied, unconcerned. "It's not my fault Merrill is too tiny to wear them. I'm sorry you got hurt, Varric, but if you whine any more, I'm gonna drop you off in the nearest cheese shop."

"Why? Does he like cheese?" Merrill asked curiously.

"No, because... whine sounds like wine... and you eat cheese with wine..." Hawke tried. When her face remained blank, he gave up, raking his unruly black hair off his forehead with a sigh. "Never mind."

"It's just a bad pun, Daisy," Varric told her. "Don't be disappointed, you aren't missing much if you don't get Hawke's sense of humor. Awful wordplay aside, Hawke, I'm trying to make a point. We've been going about this all wrong."

"What do you mean?" Hawke asked.

"What I mean is, I've changed my mind. Adventuring is for suckers. We make more money for less effort by fetching and carrying than by risking our necks going up against Qunari and ginormous poisonous spiders."

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"I don't know. Do you think I'm saying we should tell my brother to sod off, and we should start a delivery business instead? Because that's what I'm saying."

"Give up adventure and become an honest businesswoman?" Isabela squawked indignantly.

"No power in Thedas could make _you_ honest, baby," Varric said flatly, and she gave him a cheeky grin and a flip of her luxurious hair.

Hawke was ignoring the byplay, his eyes glazing over with dreams. "A real business... That could work! We'd be doing good things for people, like we did for that poor woman who'd lost her shawl. And deliver other things, too. There's no royal post in the Free Marches, after all."

"Since you'd be in charge (like you always are) we could call it Fereldan Express delivery service," Merrill suggested. The idea of staying out of dungeons where she might get blood on her skirt clearly appealed to her.

Hawke nodded. "FerEx for short."

* * *

Gamlin's home had a queue of customers that extended out the front door and snaked down the stairs into the street. A sign above the door read, "Fereldan Express: Neither rain nor snow nor slavers nor Qunari outlaws nor undead nor dwarven assassins nor Templars nor city guard pretenders nor Blights nor dragons nor giant spiders can stay our messengers about their duty. Try our super-express overnight delivery, guaranteed to arrive eventually!"

Inside, the line folded several times, guided by ropes strung from poles, to fit the maximum amount of people. Behind a small desk sat Hawke's mother, holding a rubber stamp in one hand and an ink pad in the other.

"Hi, how much to send this letter to my sister in the Gallows?" a small, nervous man asked her when he finally got to the front of the line.

She sighed, rolling her eyes. "That depends on what service you want."

"I just want it to get there," the man said, sweating.

"Do you want delivery confirmation?"

"Uh... no?"

She gave him a look, like he was clearly the dumbest idiot in a room full of dumb idiots for refusing the service. "Fine. What about insurance? Do you want to purchase insurance? It's only five silver."

"Five silver? No! It's just a letter!"

Hawke's mom drew herself up like a queen. "There's no need to take a tone with me, young man."

The customer quailed. "Look, I just want to mail a letter."

She sighed again, long-suffering. "Is there anything fragile, liquid, hazardous or perishable inside?"

"Would you let me mail it if I said yes?" the man asked sourly. When she began to frown, he hasten to add, "No, no, of course not."

"Six silver."

He counted out the coins, and she took the letter. She viciously rubbed the stamp into the ink pad, then rammed the stamp down onto the letter with a _bang_. He winced, glad there really hadn't been anything fragile, liquid, hazardous or perishable inside, and fled.

"NEXT!" Hawke's mom shouted. "Come on, now, I don't have all day!"

Gamlen called back to her from his small office, where he was counting the money. "Yes you do, as long as they keep paying," he chortled, and gleefully pocketed enough cash to supply a whole weekend of poker.

* * *

Carver pulled up to the back of his uncle's house and parked his empty cart at the base of the stairs. He looked at the piles of boxes waiting to be delivered and his sour mood intensified until he probably could have curdled milk at forty paces.

Of course _he_ was the one stuck delivering the boxes. _Oh, but Carver, you're so strong, you won't mind pulling the heavy cart up and down the stairs_. And Kirkwall seemed to consist of nothing _but_ stairs. While his brother was off nancing around with his freaky elf, of course _he_ had to keep the business running. Just like in Lothering, where his brother had always had some excuse to be away from the farm and he, Carver, had always been the one who had to actually plow the fields. He deserved better than to be his brother's carthorse!

Carver climbed the flight of stairs up to the back door and hefted the closest box. It was heavy, of course. He sneered at the box, and abruptly decided there was no way in Thedas he was going to walk up and down those stairs for each one. He set himself and heaved the box underhand down the stairs. It hit the cart and bounced, rolling into the street, where it was immediately run over by a wagon full of of beer.

That was actually pretty satisfying. He threw down the rest of the boxes, watching them roll, bounce, or just land with a thump. He felt a little bit guilty when a few of them tinkled and one began to leak some sort of liquid, but really, the sender should have paid for the insurance, and they weren't supposed to be shipping anything fragile, liquid, hazardous or perishable anyway.

* * *

Isabela approached the door with practiced care. Her soft-soled boots made no sound on the cobbles, and she knew nobody from inside the mansion could possibly see her. Carver had been a little surprised when she volunteered to take the Hightown delivery route, but he hadn't complained. Now, her hard work was about to pay off.

She held on to the shadows all the way up to the door. There, she pulled out her notepad and carefully wrote a note. "Third delivery attempt. Delivery not received – nobody home. Package has been returned to sender." She pulled the paper off the notepad, attached a piece of sticky gum, and took a deep breath. Then, she jerked the bell-pull, slapped the note on the door, and bolted at top speed for the nearest alley.

Once she was safely out of earshot, she pulled out the package and looked it over. The people of Kirkwall had an organic approach to addresses, and the return address on this one was "Ben Tanner what lives over the tanner shop," which definitely wasn't a properly formatted address. Naturally, she couldn't be expected to hunt down this mysterious Ben Tanner to return the package. Especially not when the package rattled so enticingly and smelled like fine leather, and anyway, Ben's tanning shop was too long a walk for such a hot day. She stuffed the package into her bag and sauntered off, whistling.

Back at the mansion, the door opened and a woman in a bathrobe and curlers leaned out, looking around for whoever had rung the doorbell. Then she spotted the note.

"Aw, son of a _bitch_!"

* * *

"And this here is the most innovative aspect of our business," Varric continued, ushering the Viscount past the lines and into the loft in the rear of Gamlen's house.

Merrill and Anders looked up from their octagonal table where they had been bent over a crystal ball. "Hello," Merrill said nervously.

"Go on, Daisy, tell the man what you do here," Varric encouraged. "We're hoping to get a city contract."

"Oh! Um," Merrill floundered, blushing. "Well, uh, we sort of... read the future? In a way?"

"I told you, don't tell people that," Anders said repressively. "I know it sounds dramatic, but if you tell people you can read the future, they'll always be asking you to describe their true love and frankly, honey, most people don't have one and never will."

"Sorry, Anders," she said meekly.

"Don't be so hard on the girl, Sparky," Varric said, and turned back to the bewildered Viscount. "What our darling Daisy is trying to say is, we don't even have to wait for someone to want to have something delivered before we deliver it."

"We were always finding things while we were adventuring," Merrill chirped. "Books, rare liquors, ointments for embarrassing conditions. Somehow, Hawke always knew exactly who to give those things to. So, we just sped that process up a little with some magic."

"Take the case of the paragon's toe, for example," Anders took up the thread. "We divined the presence of a stone toe in a chest in the back room of the Blooming Rose, and that there was a guy down in Lowtown who would want it someday. So, Hawke goes and gets it for him. Usually people are so grateful, they pay way more than if they'd had to actually ask us to deliver it."

"Usually?" the Viscount asked sharply. "Sometimes they aren't?"

"Well," Anders shifted uneasily. "There was the time we delivered this woman an engagement ring before her lover had actually proposed. It was a bit awkward."

"But the benefits far outweigh the occasional hiccups," Varric said smoothly.

"Varric, I find it difficult to believe you can manage this sort of thing without employing mages," the Viscount said.

"Oh, we _are_ mages," Merrill said happily. "But the Chantry and the Templars don't seem to care, as long as we're with Hawke. He takes us into the Gallows all the time and the Templars don't stop us. Why, Anders here even got possessed by a demon right in the middle of the Chantry and he and Hawke killed a dozen Templars and nobody said boo when they walked out all covered in blood!"

"Oh, well, that's all right then," said the Viscount. "Consider yourself hired."

* * *

"Fenris," Hawke cooed.

"Hawke."

"Oh, Fenris."

"Oh, Hawke."

"You're so grim and sexy."

"I know. I practice this look of smoldering angst in the mirror. You're not so bad yourself."

"It's the beard," Hawke said modestly.

"And the bangs. Shaggy black bangs, a very nice touch. And the unnatural amber eyes."

"Can I tell you a secret?"

Fenris leaned closer, which was quite a feat considering they were already completely entwined, cuddling on top of a blanket on the beach. The fog and the many shipwrecks in view provided the ideal brooding atmosphere for Fenris. "You can tell me."

"I wear contacts."

"No!"

"No, really, I do. Nobody has eyes this color naturally."

"Well," Fenris said after a long pause. "Perhaps I can trust you with a secret as well."

"Yes!"

"...I bleach my hair."

Hawke gasped. "No shit!"

"I – how do you say it? I do not shit you."

"Fenris, we're, like, two halves of the same person." Hawke clung to the elf until he might have crushed the smaller man, were Fenris's bones not lyrium-enhanced. "Run away with me."

"Really?"

"Really. We killed your old master. The delivery business has made us all fabulously wealthy. Let's just run away together. Ride off into the sunset."

"I hate horses."

"You know what I mean." Hawke grinned. "And you like horses. It's ponies you hate. They're too cute."

"Oh, right." Fenris considered that, then stood up. "Very well. Shall we?"

Hawke gaped at him. "What, now?"

"I am eager to leave this place of slavery behind me."

* * *

The Viscount strode through the streets of Lowtown, his entourage fanned out behind him. None of his deliveries had reached their destination in the past week, and he meant to have words with Varric, his sales rep. When he arrived at FerEx's headquarters, though, his righteous indignation faded.

The building was a blasted-out wreck. Smoke wisped up slowly from the crater, where street people were turning over blackened stones in search of nuggets of silver and gold from where coins had melted in the intense heat.

"Andraste's mercy!" the Viscount cried in shock. "What happened here?"

"Hawke left."

The Viscount spun around to see the ginger dwarf come out of the shadows, his swagger slightly more subdued than before. "So what? Did he torch the place before he left?"

"No, nothing like that." Varric stood beside him, gazing at the wreckage with his meaty hands on his hips. "After he left, Isabela took off in a huff because he chose that Fenris over her. Then Carver had a hissy fit and ran away to join the Templars. The next day, Merrill and Anders were blatantly practicing magic right in front of the public, just like they always do, but-"

"But now that Hawke is gone, suddenly the Templars notice," the Viscount sighed. "I knew it was too good to be true."

"Yup. The Templars came to take Anders while he was here. Boy has some serious anger issues." Varric shook his head. "Anyway, you're looking at the result. Me and Merrill managed to make it out, but FerEx is gone."

"I'm sorry," the Viscount said, and meant it, because Kirkwall was in enough trouble as it was without a thriving business exploding without warning.

"Eh, it's all right," Varric shrugged his burly shoulders. "I'd been meaning to get out anyway. I've got a nice little nest egg, and me and Merrill are going to move out into the country, set up a nice little house to raise our children in."

"Oh! Congratulations," said the Viscount.

"Thank you." Varric beamed. "Don't worry about me. Varric always comes out on top."


End file.
